My Secret Love
by Sarah74656
Summary: Hermione has a secret love, but what will happen when Ginny finds out about it?


_Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Harry Potter, no names, no storylines, nothing. Not even a wand. Though I wish I did!_

_Author Comment: This is just the product of a wandering mind on an evening when I had nothing to do. Please, read and review for me; tell me whether I should bother writing anything else on my slow nights!_

I've got a secret love. Nobody knows about it, not even Harry or Ron. Maybe it's wrong to keep secrets like this from your best friends, but I can't help it – if I told them then there's no way they'd let me live it down. This is just too much of a huge, hush-hush, must-not-be-revealed, top-secret type of secret, even more so than some of the secrets being kept by the Order. By now, you might have some kind of idea just how secret my secret is.

Or maybe I should say 'was'. Because of course, like any big secret I just couldn't keep it to myself. Not because I'm the sort to gossip or anything, understand that, please, but because if you're hiding a big secret then those close to you will pick up on it, and sooner or later they'll work it out. The person who worked out my secret was Ginny Weasley.

It always happens when you least expect it. You've got into a routine; you think you're safe from prying eyes and then; bam! Someone catches you out.

Maybe I should let on what my secret love is. I'm in love with quidditch.

Yes, that's right. Me, Hermione Granger, the queen book-worm of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has started playing a sport. I just couldn't help myself; for me, flying represented something I was incapable of learning from my books, so it was something that I had to do. At first it was about proving to myself that I could learn something by practice. But once I'd mastered the basics of getting myself onto the broom, into the air and back down again, all without causing any major damage to myself, I was hooked. Suddenly I knew why it was that Harry and Ron go on about their brooms and flying and all that stuff I never understood before.

There's something about feeling the wind in your hair, as vulnerable as a twig in a thunderstorm, as light as a feather and master of your own destiny all at once. For someone who studies as much as I it's not often that the magic I do really does seem magical, but flying really does feel enchanted. I guess part of that is down to my muggle heritage, because it's not something I've done from an early age like some wizarding families have. Whatever caused it though, I knew from the first moment that I was in the air and stopped worrying about falling back to the ground that I was in love.

So anyway, back to how my secret was discovered. Obviously, I couldn't tell Harry or Ron about my new love, so I was reduced to sneaking out into the grounds to practice on my broom. In the early days I used school brooms from the cupboard, which I unlocked using the Alohamora charm. It didn't take long though before I wanted my own broom, so I borrowed Ron's copy of the Quality Quidditch Supplies mail order form which he'd been using as a bookmark and ordered myself a beautiful Nimbus 2001. They've gone down in price a fair bit since they first came out because of the newer brooms like the Firebolt, so I could afford a nice broom for a not-to-expensive price tag. After a lengthy conversation with the people at QQS I managed to persuade them to send the package with a special delivery owl so that it arrived separate from the other post, and as soon as it arrived I hid it away in my room. I considered hiding it the muggle way underneath my bed, but I decided that wasn't enough. Even though Harry and Ron couldn't get into the girls' dormitories that wouldn't stop someone like Parvarti or Lavender finding it by accident and then letting it slip to the lads. People with the best of intentions still can't be trusted to keep their mouths shut about such important matters. So I decided on extra precautions, and cast a complicated illusory charm that I read about in one of the advanced charm-work books I'd been reading.

Every night when Harry and Ron were working late finishing an assignment or working away at their own quidditch practice, I would sneak up to my room, grab my broom and run out into the grounds to fly. I practised steep rises and dives, sharp left and right turns and weaving in and out of the trees in the forest. It didn't take long before I started to get good, but I still couldn't admit my secret affair with flying to anyone.

It was on one of those nights when I thought that nobody was watching me that Ginny caught me sneaking out of the common room with my broom. As a connoisseur of sneaking-around herself she knew exactly what I was doing, but as a good friend she kept quiet until she'd followed me out of earshot of everyone else. Then, of course, as a Weasley she let rip yelling at me, asking how I thought I could keep a secret from her. And then when I told her how I'd been sneaking around to keep my secret love from Harry and Ron she understood, and we had a great big laugh at the lads' expense.

Now when I go out flying I don't go out alone; Ginny comes with me and we fly together in the shadows as the sun sets on Hogwarts castle.


End file.
